The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-05-29
MR.. ROOSEVELT ON THE RANCH
WOMAN.
Some Points About Them-A Few
With Big Fortunes.

some Points About Them-A Few
With Big Fortunes.
Mr.. Theodore Roosevelt, to whom his
Dakota ranch is an object of interest quite
as engrossing as the luckless Mugwump,
and regarded with rather more friendly
feelings, says that the ranch woman-the
cattle queen, as the West is falling into the
way of styling hers no newspaper myth.
She exists; her numbers are increasing, and
she is one of the most characteristic types
that the conditions of American life have
evolved. She is the modern independent
woman, but with difference. She does not
stand on her own feet like the New York
woman because she feels her influence in
society, nor like the New England woman
because she has been taught to think for
herself, but because, like all frontiersmen,
she has been forced to act for herself and
with true Western grit she does it we'll
She knows how to take care of herself.
She knows how to take care of her cattle.
She knows how to make for her children a
homestead and heritage. Occasionally,
she knows what few self-supporting women
have yet learned, how to make money not
only to live on but to grow rich on, as men
and rich men count wealth nowadays
There are women all over the West, y
Mr.. Roosevelt said the other dav, s'who
have come to be as thoroughly capable of
managing their affairs for themselves as if
they were the shrewdest of men. Fortitude
and patience we always look for in woman,
but cool bravery and business talent are the
qualities that sometimes come out strongest
when she finds herself facing a rude
civilization and left to shift for herself as
best she can
Life on the ranch is desperately rough
for woman. There is no call to pity a
pioneer of the other sex, for if he has the
right stuff in him it won't hurt him to
buckle right down to the bone and then he
can't but succeed. But for a woman, to an
Eastern at least, it seems different And
yet, so far as one can see, they like it, good
many of them, and it brings out the best
that is in them.
''They are not all angels by any means,
and woman desperate is sometimes quite
as much to be feared as the worst of the men.
There was one down in Arizona whom the
ranchmen tell tales of yet, and with some
thing like pride in her exploits too, who
killed, SO they say, twenty-five men with
her own hand. She was hard rider and a
crack shot, so that it was decidedly risky to
be covered by her rife. But that same pluck
and courage that she showed turned into
more peaceful channels makes a splendid
success of some of the ranchwomen.
The women who are managing cattle
ranges for themselves, not helping their
lluSDanuS gam a IOOJlflg winch is sometimes
about as hard, come from all social ranks
and have drifted into the business don't
know what proportion of them have deliber-
ately chosen tin all sorts of ways. Some
OF them are Texans who were almost era
died with cattle, and TO whom running a
mower, feeding stock, breaking wild horses
or doing any sort of work about q ranch is
so much matter of education and habit
that it seems as much their natural occupa-
ton as taking in sewing to a notable house
wife left widow in an Eastern village
They take hold cleverly with their husbands
If they marry; they strike out for them
selves on a small scale, which sometimes
grows TO larger one if they don't
Other ranchwomen, especially in
Dakota, come from New England, New
York or the States north of the Ohio. There
are school teachers amongs them, who have
concluded to train something that may pos.
sibly shoot more profitable than the unfruit-
full young idea. Most Of them went West,
in the first place, with their husbands, to see
what could be done in new country, and
when the man of the family died or broke
down, the wife, rather than sacrifice the
toothold already gained, stayed on, learned
by experience, bought her knowledge pretty
dearly sometimes, failed utterly perhaps, If
the winters were bad or a fire swept her
buildings; succeeded more probably, kept
her stock in good shape, added TO their
numbers and came out ahead little every
year. It is no joke to succeed in Dakota in
cattle raising Or tree planting or wneat